game-of-thrones – Heads Twogetherhttps://headstwogether.com
Daily Animal AwesomenessSun, 18 Nov 2018 10:40:40 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.8.7134250984Jon and Dany’s relationship has always been the endgame, says ‘Game of Thrones’ directorhttps://headstwogether.com/jon-and-danys-relationship-has-always-been-the-endgame-says-game-of-thrones-director/
Thu, 24 Aug 2017 22:12:37 +0000https://headstwogether.com/?p=599Dany and Jon, sittin' in a cabin…Image: hbo The penultimate episode of Game of Thrones Season 7 was arguably the most stressful installment since the Red Wedding — North of the Wall, we saw one of Daenerys’ beloved dragons die, before being resurrected by the […]

With only one episode left this season — and only six episodes to come in Season 8 — we’re rapidly approaching the show’s endgame, which means that characters we love are probably going to start dying again, and alliances will be forced to solidify or shatter in the face of the Night King’s advance on Westeros.

With that in mind, we spoke to Alan Taylor, director of episode 706, “Beyond the Wall,” to discuss the developments of last Sunday’s episode and the tensions rising heading into the finale — including the fact that George R. R. Martin was apparently dropping hints about his ultimate plan for the story way back in Season 1.

Taylor on location in Iceland

Image: helen sloan/hbo

The last time you directed on the show was in Season 2 — has the experience changed much since then?

Yeah, it’s funny; it’s very, very different, and yet the same. The first two seasons, it had by no means the scale of audience attention that it has now, and when I came back after being away for a while, I sort of thought I’d be returning to the same enterprise. When I came back, I was immediately struck by how much bigger the whole thing has gotten. It was always big — there were always two units functioning simultaneously in different countries, so it was always a certain scale — but now instead of one bunker you walk by on the way to the stage, now there’s 10.

The main difference, I think, is probably the certain story elements, like the dragons. The visual effects are a huge part of it in a way they weren’t before. If you’re doing one shot on a frozen lake with a dragon, it’s actually seven shots that are being stitched together in various layers, shot in various ways to compose into the story beats, so it’s a much more complex machine now than it used to be. But the funny thing is that the spirit remains the same. It still feels like an indie production. People are still completely unpretentious, including the actors and how they do the work. It still feels scruffy and rough and ready. It’s got the worst craft services of any production I’ve ever been on — it’s got two crackers and some cold tea. [Laughs.] It hasn’t gotten bloated at all. It’s still lean, but the finished product is huge.

How long did that final battle on the frozen lake take to film, all told?

Oh boy. I’d forgotten how many days we were there on that frozen lake, but I can tell you it felt like roughly forever. It was getting up pre-dawn every day, going to this quarry that was outside Belfast. The crew would be there already, sweeping whatever rain and stuff had happened off the ice and restoring the snow on our set, which was huge and 360 degrees.

I remember the DP — who is brilliant, Jonathan Freeman — despairing because he realized one day we had bright sunlight, which is horrible when you’re North of the Wall, and fog, which is impossible to shoot in, and snow and rain all in the same day. He’s trying to pull a coherent vision out of all those elements. Coupled with the fact that when Dany arrives, she’s sitting on a huge styrofoam green thing on top of our [island], and you’re shooting three layers of shot … any time anybody goes through the ice, you know you’re going to be shooting that later in a dunk tank on a sound stage. It was huge and insanely complex. We were there for weeks, and I know that the investment of my time was something I’ve never experienced in television. I think from my first scout of that location to finishing the episode took five months, which is way into feature film territory, not television.

I honestly had no idea you filmed the ice lake battle in a quarry in Belfast instead of in Iceland until I saw the behind-the-scenes video from filming.

Yeah, that was tricky. We knew we were going to be running around in Iceland for the most part for the first half of the episode and then have to find a way to transition to our ice lake, and we were lucky to find an intersection in this gorge that we were in in Iceland that could believably take us to this new set, so that worked out. We had to shoot the frozen lake close to home, because there’s too much prosthetics and pyrotechnics and stunts that we couldn’t do that remotely somewhere on location. We had to do that somewhere near base camp.

I’m so fascinated by the biology of the dragons – can you talk me through the process of what happened to Viserion after the Night King hit him and we saw that explosion from his throat?

A tremendous amount of thought went into them from the early stages. It was very important to David and Dan that the dragons be quintessentially believable. They had a huge disgust for dragons that had four legs and wings. Many times you see dragons rendered that way, and their point is that nowhere in nature do you see a creature that is built that way. So they were adamant that they had to have large hind legs and that the wings had to be elements of the four legs.

Beyond that, the biology of how you blow fire and what’s the pilot light like on the inside of the throat … One of the fun things here, and there’s a lot of debate as to how much we could do it, was when he gets stabbed through the throat, he’s trailing blood as he falls. He’s also trailing smoke and flame as he falls. So he looks like a jet fighter going down. We were mindful of what the reality would be if you punctured one of these guys there.

And then a lot of thought went into the logistics of the scale of it; how much room is going to be required to arc around, how much ice will it tear up when it hits the ground? And besides all that, trying to make sure that it had a chance to play emotionally. One of my favorite shots is the one where Viserion sinks below the ice, and it’s the one time we take a long time with the moment and let it stretch. We’re in a full battle at the time, but we had to let that moment hang long enough… and the visual effects department did a wonderful job of realizing it, you feel the mass of the creature. It feels so lifelike in death. I think it really worked well.

There’s also a lot of effort going into giving them moments of character. There’s a tiny moment that probably not many people noticed, but when Dany and Tyrion are walking out to the dragons when she decides she’s going to go off on this mission, they’re just waking up from a nap. You see three dragons raising up in the foreground, and one of them shakes his head side to side. That’s because our storyboard artist, who’s kind of brilliant, who has two dogs, knows that when her dogs get up from a long sleep, they shake their head. You can see, I think it’s Viserion in the background, doing that gesture. It’s little observations like that to make sure the dragons are fully alive.

We see Jon and Daenerys share a moment of intimacy on the ship, but then there’s that subtle shift and Dany pulls away and shuts down on him – what’s going through her mind in that moment?

Certainly those who have read the books or are reading the books know that we’ve been heading in this direction for a long time. I’ve mentioned before that it was a revelation to me about the scale of George R. R. Martin’s thinking that he came to visit the set in Season 1, when none of us knew what we were contending with really, and said a few things that made it clear that, for him, this whole epic thing — this story he was telling — all came down to these two and them getting together.

Of course, back then, none of us knew that. We didn’t know that Robb Stark was going to [die] – he seemed like he was the heir apparent, and the fact that this bastard sidekick brother and this girl on a whole different continent were going to turn into the core of the show, we didn’t see that coming yet.

I think we’ve known for a while that Tyrion is making fun of Dany, because he sees what’s coming. I think there’s a bunch of things at work in that scene, and they pulled it off wonderfully. It’s just the right level of swooning for each other but drawing back. It was one close-up of Emilia that really tells that story very well, where you see her, she’s going over the edge, and then she forces herself back when she pulls her hand back. It’s probably because she’s got a lot of responsibility. She can’t be falling like this. Tyrion has already made fun of her for this, so she’s got that motive to draw back. I think everybody understands it’s pretty inevitable.

The tension in Arya and Sansa’s relationship is almost unbearable right now. How did you and Maisie approach that final scene between them from Arya’s perspective?

All my favorite scenes are the scenes between the girls. I think it’s probably because I have two young daughters who spend a healthy amount of time hating each other’s guts. Watching these two feel each other out and test each other and feeling the balance of power shift back and forth between them was a real delight. I remember reading the script and thinking, “Oh my God. It’s eight pages, and they’re just standing there. What are we going to do?”

We blocked it in a way that felt like it had a little bit of momentum to it, and there’s a nice thing where they’re turning the tables on each other. [In their first scene together, where Arya confronts Sansa about the letter] each one takes some time with the bloody carcasses hanging behind them… you really feel that they both have a case to make. What I also like is they’re both legitimately lethal at this point, and we know that Arya can kill things at the drop of a hat. I think we’re starting to realize that Sansa has gotten somewhere quite dark. She’s learned a lot from Cersei, as she says at one point.

I love the fact that that tension is there, and I just wanted people to feel that you weren’t sure who was going to kill who, but it was quite believable that either one could kill the other. There are things like the dagger in the scene between them and the fact that Brienne is being sent away to clear the deck so there’s no police in town. The idea is to build up the expectation as much as possible that one of them is going to die, and hopefully surprise people by what happens.

]]>599‘Game of Thrones’ finale photos tease the showdown we’ve been waiting forhttps://headstwogether.com/game-of-thrones-finale-photos-tease-the-showdown-weve-been-waiting-for/
Thu, 24 Aug 2017 16:00:38 +0000https://headstwogether.com/?p=592There's a reason why he's King in the *North*Image: hbo HBO has released the first photos from the Game of Thrones Season 7 finale, titled “The Dragon and the Wolf.” SEE ALSO: ‘Game of Thrones’ Season 7 finale promises big things for Dany and Jon […]

Since then, Jon’s gone up in the world — sure, he got stabbed a bunch one time, but no one’s better at dramatically dispatching White Walkers than he is, so suck it, Jaime!

Meanwhile, Cersei has never said a word to the King in the North in the entirety of the show’s run, and she hasn’t been face-to-face with little bro Tyrion since episode 6 of Season 4, when he was on trial for murdering her beloved son Joffrey, so this should be fun.

Image: hbo

What could possibly go wrong in this scenario?

Image: hbo

As we saw in the preview trailer for the finale, Dany has finally taken pity on Grey Worm and her Unsullied forces and brought them back from guarding the empty hallways at Casterly Rock, and they make an impressive showing outside the walls of King’s Landing here.

Oh hey, it’s Bran! Remember Bran? He’s had eff-all to do since showing up at Winterfell, reminding his sister of her traumatic rape, cryptically messing with Littlefinger and spying on the Night King in episode 5. (Okay, he’s been slightly more useful than Theon, but that’s a low bar.) Will he be useful this week and finally reveal the truth about Jon’s parentage? The jury’s still out!

Image: hbo

Sansa’s relationship with Arya is nothing short of arctic right now, so this chilly image is apropos, if not particularly enlightening. The director of episode 6 told us that their tense showdown last week was supposed to “build up the expectation as much as possible that one of them is going to die,” so consider us suitably freaked out.

Image: hbo

Even Cersei’s started wearing fur — we’re guessing it’s less of an homage to her Northern guest and more because King’s Landing looks draughty as hell.

Interestingly, none of the photos show Daenerys — or the captured wight that the Suicide Squad sacrificed a dragon for — probably because they want to save her showdown with Cersei for the screen. We know it’s coming, and we know it’ll be epic.

]]>592This old ‘Game of Thrones’ book quote from Stannis could be huge for Daeneryshttps://headstwogether.com/this-old-game-of-thrones-book-quote-from-stannis-could-be-huge-for-daenerys/
Thu, 10 Aug 2017 17:33:40 +0000https://headstwogether.com/?p=281Just look at Davos standing at the back there. Isn't he just the best?Image: hbo Warning: Contains an onion-load of spoilers for Game of Thrones Season 7. It’s now been well-established that Ser Davos is fast becoming one of the greatest characters in Game of […]

]]>281Jaime Lannister still rules this week’s ‘Game of Thrones’ power rankingshttps://headstwogether.com/jaime-lannister-still-rules-this-weeks-game-of-thrones-power-rankings/
Thu, 10 Aug 2017 15:34:14 +0000https://headstwogether.com/?p=278What is drowning shall not die.Image: HBO/Macall B. Polay The Game of Thrones power rankings determines which character is most likely to sit on the Iron Throne at the end of the series next year: not the power behind it, but officially ruling Westeros. Our […]

The Game of Thrones power rankings determines which character is most likely to sit on the Iron Throne at the end of the series next year: not the power behind it, but officially ruling Westeros. Our judgment is based on information available at the end of each episode. You can read last week’s rankingshere.

This isn’t so much a spoiler alert as a blindingly obvious fact: Jaime Lannister isn’t dead, despite that final shot of his armor-covered body plummeting to an apparent watery grave in “The Spoils of War.” The showrunners already tried this fake-out by “drowning” Tyrion in a season 5 cliffhanger. Besides, Jaime has a clearer path to floatation: lose the armor (and the gold hand).

So Jaime retains the top human position in our power rankings. Read on to find out how that devastating dragon-made massacre has scrambled everyone else’s chances of reaching the Iron Throne, with unexpected results.

10. Petyr Baelish (-1)

Oh, Littlefinger, we can tell you’re hatching a plot of some description involving Sansa in Winterfell. We know you have the most burning ambition of anyone in the Seven Kingdoms.

But you didn’t reckon on the other two Stark kids arriving, did you? Arya just bested one of the best swordspeople in the kingdom; a girl will not be taken in by your schemes. And Bran is the gods-damn NSA: he’s been listening in on just about everything that happens in your brain, apparently.

Chaos is a ladder and you’re out of rungs, my weird friend.

9. Bran Stark (+1)

Still creepy, now even more omniscient, the Three-Eyed Raven is still the, um, dark horse of the power rankings. (Hey, it’s fantasy, ravens can be horses, just go with it.)

Think about it: even Dany is going a bit loopy with power. But if you really wanted to break the wheel of monarchy, to end the violent cycle of Westerosi house fighting Westerosi house, who would you install on the throne?

Answer: an all-knowing, time-traveling superbeing who doesn’t owe allegiance to any one house anymore and, having no ego and no tempestuous emotions, would hatch no plots against his people.

8. Euron Greyjoy (unchanged)

The psychotic Jack Sparrow of Westeros is, so far as we know, still bombarding Grey Worm and the Unsullied from the coast of Casterly Rock. Not a bad holding pattern to be in.

7. Daenerys Targaryen (-3)

What? How can we rate the Queen of Dragons this low in her moment of total fire-breathing triumph over the Lannister forces?

Well, for two things, she and Drogon came within a white hair’s breadth of fairly stupid deaths, at the hands of Jaime’s lance and Bronn’s Scorpion respectively. The word is out now: dragons can be gravely wounded. You can bet Qyburn is churning out Scorpions by the dozen to defend King’s Landing.

That ripping sound you hear is any reasonable insurance agent tearing up the Targaryen dragon-riding policy.

Furthermore, Dany appears to be getting so drunk with power in the sneak peek of next week’s episode that Varys and Tyrion have to figure out ways of roping her in. She’s also letting one of her dragons scream in Jon Snow’s face. None of this bodes well for her mental state.

6. Sansa Stark (-1)

The acting Queen in the North is still in a powerful position. But the mistrust she showed towards Arya on hearing of her kill list, combined with the fact that she hasn’t kicked Littlefinger to the curb, suggests Sansa doesn’t quite know who her real friends are yet.

5. Jon Snow (+1)

The King in the North seems to have, er, rubbed Dany the right way during their encounter in the cave. And he’s giving her all the right advice: If you burn cities, you’re no better than any other despot in Westerosi history. All this suggests Jon has what it takes to unite the rest of the power players in a do-or-die struggle against the White Walkers.

4. Cersei Lannister (-1)

The main body of her army is quite literally toast. But that doesn’t mean this most cunning of Queens is out of tricks. She has sacks full of Highgarden gold to pay her debts; she has the Iron Bank to finance further defenses; she could be about to hire the Golden Company to wear down Dany’s forces in the countryside; she has Qyburn’s ingenious Scorpions to ward off any dragon attacks. She can hole up in King’s Landing for years.

3. Jaime Lannister (-1)

Drowning but not out. If he does survive the best possible moment to kill him off, it’s probably a sign that the show has seriously big plans for Jaime; stripping his Lannister armor could literally make a new man of him one willing to conspire against his murderous sister.

Perhaps Jaime, a prince now, is actually Azor Ahai, the Prince who was promised, rather than Jon or Dany? Misdirection for the win! From Kingslayer to King is still the most compelling narrative arc at the end of the day.

2. The Night King (+5)

The show appears to be saving all its White Walker appearances in 2017 until the last few episodes, which does not suggest a happy ending to the penultimate season. Nor does the new state of anarchy that seems to have descended across most of Westeros without anyone really noticing.

Thanks to this brutal war that Dany just prolonged, the Seven Kingdoms are historically weak and ripe for annihilation by a growing army containing potentially every corpse who ever died the only army ever designed (by the viciously clever Children of the Forest) to swell its ranks with every mile it marches.

In the end, it’s likely to come down to a question of whether this still most mysterious Night King character wants to sit on an actual throne or not, and …

1. No One (unchanged)

… we’re still betting not.

But don’t despair. If the show finale of Season 8 does end with the ruined, human-free Throne room Dany saw in her vision, that does allow the showrunners one final opportunity to send the internet into a frenzy.

Picture it: close up on the Iron Throne, where we can just about make out the small stern face of the one hunter who thrived amid all the Fire and Ice and lost not one of his nine lives. It’s Ser Pounce! Where Lannister lions once roared, a cat now casually rules. Fade to black and drop the mic.

]]>278I cried literal tears after seeing Drogon wounded in ‘Game of Thrones’https://headstwogether.com/i-cried-literal-tears-after-seeing-drogon-wounded-in-game-of-thrones/
Wed, 09 Aug 2017 02:28:56 +0000https://headstwogether.com/?p=229WHERE IS MY DROGONImage: hbo This post contains spoilers for Game of Thrones Season 7, episode 4, “The Spoils of War.” There were a lot of jaw-dropping moments fromDaenerys and Jaime’s epic battle in “The Spoils of War.” But perhaps none more surprising than the […]

This post contains spoilers for Game of Thrones Season 7, episode 4, “The Spoils of War.”

There were a lot of jaw-dropping moments fromDaenerys and Jaime’s epic battle in “The Spoils of War.” But perhaps none more surprising than the visceral reaction we all had watching Bronn spear our most beloved oversized reptile like some sort of common garden lizard.

That heartbreaking cry of agony, and the episode’s inconclusive end, left many wondering: what will become of Drogon now? And oh my god, can we please award him the Goodest Boy award for fighting through the pain of a spear in the arm to protect his mommy from Jaime?

Image: giphy/nba tv

Now, Bronn’s ballista attack probably isn’t fatal, judging by the fact that Drogon seems to make it back to Dragonstone with Dany in next week’s trailer. After all, we saw Drogon survive several spears and arrows in close quarters during the attack by the Sons of the Harpy in Season 5. But even those more minor injuries from the arena left him unable to fly and in need of some serious R&R.

At the very least, the wound near Drogon’s wing could theoretically leave our Unburnt Queen’s most powerful child and weapon benched for most of the remaining season (which, to be fair, is only three more episodes but clearly a lot can happen in that time).

But there’s an even more dire possibility for Drogon’s fate based on his namesake, Dany’s late husband Khal Drogo, who, if you remember, died of an infection from a seemingly innocuous wound on his chest (and witch magic, or whatever).

The most evil man to ever attack my children

Image: HBO

If this season is teaching us anything, it’s that dragons are more fragile than we imagined.

This book quote from Tyrion could even be foreshadowing for what’s to come in the next episodes:

Unless one of those long iron scorpion bolts chanced to find an eye, the queen’s pet monster was not like to be brought down by such toys. Dragons are not so easy to kill as that. Tickle him with these and you’ll only make him angry. The eyes were where a dragon was most vulnerable.

The eyes, and the brain behind them. Not the underbelly, as certain old tales would have it. The scales there were just as tough as those along a dragon’s back and flanks. And not down the gullet either. That was madness. These would-be dragonslayers might as well try to quench a fire with a spear thrust. “Death comes out of the dragon’s mouth,” Septon Barth had written in his Unnatural History, “but death does not go in that way.”

Based on lore, and specifically George R. R. Martin’s novella The Princess and the Queen, many dragons have died in combat. Centuries ago, Aegon the Conqueror‘s sister-wife lost her dragon and life from a weapon similar to Qyburn’s “scorpion.”

But the famed Targaryen civil war called The Dance of the Dragons which left a graveyard of dragon corpses behind which heavily contributed to the creatures’ eventual extinction proved that the biggest threat to dragons are other dragons. Often, dragons died at the claws of their own kind by means of drowning, decapitation, or even gutting each other. We hate the thought of any of Dany’s children turning on each other, but there are canonical ways for it to happen, based on Martin’s books.

And for dragons, size (and age) definitely matters. Dany’s dragons are very young and vulnerable relative to the historical life expectancy of their ancestors, who often lived for centuries. But the general rule of thumb for human vs. dragon battles is: a grounded dragon is a dead dragon.

So for the love of all the gods, Khaleesi, pull that bolt out of your baby boy and fly away already!

As a self-professed Khaleesi of Hell and Mother of Pitbulls myself, Drogon’s takedown felt personally tailored to ruin me emotionally. And if, like me, you thought, “wow, that horrifying shriek of agony sounds an awful lot like my pet is being mortally wounded,” you weren’t wrong.

Game of Thrones sound designer Paula Fairfield layers a number of noises including canine sounds together to create the dragons’ screeches.

During a Con of Thrones panel In July, Fairfield even revealed that an affectionate sound Drogon made when he returned to Dany in episode 2 of Season 5 was taken from her own beloved dog, Angel, who passed away before New Year’s.

“She was my dragon; kind of a crazy street girl, unconfined, could unlock doors and escape and then would come back to mama when she was done doing her thing,” Fairfield revealed. “She would come up and sit by me… and she had this beautiful nasal whistle that was half cry, half whistle. [Drogon] has that sound and its a beautiful, tender, vulnerable sound for him.”

]]>229Where did Arya’s Valyrian steel dagger come from?https://headstwogether.com/where-did-aryas-valyrian-steel-dagger-come-from/
Tue, 08 Aug 2017 22:10:45 +0000https://headstwogether.com/?p=223Image: hbo Spoilers for Game of Thrones Season 7, episode four follow. Don’t act like you haven’t been warned. That would embarrass everyone. Well, that wonderful episode gave us many, many things, but it also gave Arya a Valyrian steel dagger. Littlefinger, in his smarmy […]

Spoilers for Game of Thrones Season 7, episode four follow. Don’t act like you haven’t been warned. That would embarrass everyone.

Well, that wonderful episode gave us many, many things, but it also gave Arya a Valyrian steel dagger.

Littlefinger, in his smarmy way, tried to bond with the newly-returned, newly-creepy Bran by giving him a very special dagger. Bran saw right through the twerp’s greasy smile (“Chaos is a ladder.”), but had no real need of the knife. So, he gave it to Arya in the midst of that very touching Stark family underneath the red leaves of the weirwood tree.

The dagger made its first appearance waaaaaaayyyyy back in the second-ever episode of this long-running show. You’ll remember in the first episode, an adventurous and much younger Bran unadvisedly climbed up into a Winterfell window and spied Lannister siblings Jaime and Cersei engaged in sexual congress, and he paid for it by being pushed out of a window by Jaime “Kingslayer” Lannister.

He fell into his ongoing paralysis and a coma. During this convalescence, a paid assassin started a fire in Winterfell, trying to draw people away from Bran’s room. And so, the would-be killer entered the room, equipped with the dragon bone-hilted, Valyrian steel dagger and finds only Bran and his mother Catelyn Stark.

Catelyn puts up a valiant and bloody fight, but in the end, it is Bran’s adopted dire wolf, Summer, who saves the comatose boy from the Valyrian blade.

The blade proves quite a plot point, as Catelyn uses it to determine who, exactly paid an assassin and equipped them with such a valuable weapon to murder her son. On the way to King’s Landing, when her husband Ned was still alive and the Hand of King Robert Baratheon, Catelyn shows the dagger to Littlefinger, who says it belonged to Tyrion Lannister.

Well.

This is what kicks up the whole Lannister v. Stark feud, as Catelyn imprisons Tyrion for trying to kill her son. That led to his being held in the Eyrie where Bronn had to prove Tyrion’s innocence by defeating the Lady Lysa Arryn’s champion

The dagger is last seen on Ned’s desk in King’s Landing. After Littlefinger betrays him to his death, the schemer takes it back. Only to give it to Bran, who gives it to Arya.

But who paid for Bran’s assassination in the first place?

That is something that is very much still up for debate. Most of the evidence in the show and the books points to unfortunate purple wedding-attendee King Joffrey being the one who paid for the assassination to impress King Baratheon. Though many still believe that Littlefinger himself was responsible for the attempt.

Regardless, this episode gave another Stark a very, very rare Valyrian steel weapon. It has long been theorized that these scattered relics will prove decisive in the coming white walker battle. This seems especially true since, Jon Snow now has access to a whole mine of dragon glass, which is supposed to be the key ingredient to making Valyrian steel.

Either way, we think that this Valyrian steel weapon wound up in the right hands.